The Rise Of Leslie Knope
by robert3A-SN
Summary: After "Eagleton", Leslie reflects on all of her success from that episode, and on how success has come much more frequently for her lately- but can't help but think that this was hardly the case not so long ago.


**Warning: Spoilers for "Eagleton" for those who still haven't seen it. But it's mostly a satirical/semi-serious reflection on Leslie's overall progress from the bumbling dreamer of the early episodes, to the Pawnee super woman of today- and that of her show from mere _Office _clone to powerhouse.**

As Ron was enjoying his perfect birthday party, Leslie was walking down the halls, reflecting on her perfect birthday party setup. As hard as it was to resist doing all the things she really wanted to do for him, this actually came out even better. Ron played right into her hands, while Ann gave her usual great help, and Leslie actually found a video store with Ron's favorite movies after all. The only thing that would have made it better was if she had time to watch Ron fall apart as planned, but she had to take on Eagleton and Lindsay, and go to jail, and then form the whiffle ball league in a day.

But all that worked out perfectly too- in fact, she actually had two perfect plans come to perfect life in the same day. She even had some closure with Lindsay to boot, so that made it a win-win-win instead of just a win-win. All in all, it was quite a wonderful day, even by recent standards.

This ranked right up there with saving the painting, getting all those ideas after an actual sleep, the Harvest Festival, figuring out how to do the time capsule, giving that big speech while on flu meds, getting the department reopened, putting on the Freddy Spaghetti concert, Ben…..

And all that had actually happened in the last year. It all came so quickly, but a lot of it topped all her other really big successes in the last few years combined. Like….like….

Like?

"So where are all the birthday bands and clowns?"

Once again, Leslie was hit with a tornado of conflicted feelings when she saw and heard Ben. But this time, relief was the dominant emotion, after that recent train of thought beforehand. Yet it was then replaced with confusion once the birthday joke got through to her. "Birthday? Heh, what a weird, out of nowhere thing to bring up, isn't it?"

"I peeked in on you and Ann setting up Ron's birthday room yesterday. It was one of the few half-hours where you weren't working on the field, so I figured something was up. My sneakiness helped me figure out the rest from there." Leslie briefly indulged in what else his sneakiness could have helped him figure out about her- but fortunately, she was getting just a little better at holding that fantasy back.

"Well, that was only a dress rehearsal for next year, so don't worry. Next May 6'th will be the greatest stimulus ever for Pawnee's birthday clown industry."

"If it's like your whiffle ball stimulus, I'm sure they won't be hung up for bailouts afterwards." Ah, there was political nerd Ben- nice to see that sci-fi nerd Ben could let him get some face time once in a while. But what about all the other nerd Ben's that were still in the shadows? Leslie was sure she could draw them out if she….had more time to do research with the Ben gang.

"Speaking of which, I figured the new ball park could use some cleaning up after a busy first day," regular Ben went on. "But since I didn't build it and plan it out on napkins from Eagleton's prison lunch room, I figured the creator could show me the best way to fix it back up."

If creator meant Leslie in Ben's secret language, then it meant….a lot of other things too. "You mean now? At night? Just you and me…..and the field, of course?"

"Well, if you think I'll need more supervisors…."

"No! I mean, um, I think I remember enough of the guidelines for you to get by." Leslie knew that wasn't her smoothest recovery, at least compared to the others she had to make lately. But Ben seemed to buy it as they headed out of City Hall.

At the least, he was buying it enough to bring her out for a nighttime…..something other than a date at Pawnee's new field. God, this day really couldn't get any better!

It was already climbing above all those other big successes before last year…..the ones which she still couldn't remember much of.

But once again, she blocked those weird thoughts out of her head, since the weird but fun Ben thoughts were staking their usual claim to her brain now. The field really didn't need to be fixed up too much, at least by the standards of Pawnee's usual messes. Yet by now, Leslie and Ben were well aware that official work duties were just a means to an end for more important activities, and talks, and lots of other fun things. At least the fun things they were still allowed to do.

Maybe it was pushing those boundaries just a little bit to sit in the stands with him, admiring what they'd put together in the last day, under a nice night to do….those things they still couldn't do. Yet Leslie could try and hold off caring about that for a little while longer.

"I still can't believe you did all this in a day, Leslie. Although I don't know why that is. I mean, this is just par for the course for you."

This snapped Leslie's train of Ben-thought, perhaps a bit more strongly than she expected. "What? Using a golf term about a baseball field…..too bad sand traps don't have fences around it, huh?" That could have been a better comeback, but somehow, Leslie's mind seemed to be drifting on other things…things where coming back hadn't come so easy for her.

"I guess….but since this came from the woman who brought us the Harvest Festival, defeated the flu, put on a concert during a government shutdown, and stopped the greatest series of train wreck interviews ever, I'm sure she could have found a way around that. I mean, those kinds of miracles are just regular as clockwork for her."

And like that, for the second time, Ben's words about the greatness of Leslie Knope just added more pressure. But it was a different kind of pressure than in the camping trip. This time, it restored the pressure of some more…unpleasant memories she hadn't had to think about for a while. All those time when her big ideas, projects, goals…..and encounters with men just didn't end in miracles.

In fact, those times went on for a lot longer than just one year of success. A lot longer than Leslie would care to admit or reflect on, but now she just couldn't stop. Now it was even starting to make her rethink the good times, and how….sudden they were….

"No they're not…..God, they really aren't." Although Leslie's eyes were still on the field, they really weren't looking at anything in the area, or even at anything from the past year. "How the hell am I doing this?"

"Doing what?" If Leslie had noticed, she might have seen how Ben was tightening up, with that old familiar fear that he'd said the wrong thing. But she was nowhere near noticing now.

"This, all this! Having huge, great ideas and actually pulling them off! Going big and actually getting big! Having long nights with…..people I know that aren't just co-workers. This doesn't happen to me, or at least it didn't use to."

Leslie didn't even care how she almost gave other things away with that 'just co-worker' comment. But she eventually turned to look at her not just-co worker. "You weren't here before last year. So you didn't see all those times when I wasn't a super woman, or Princess Leia or one of your nerdy wonder women." She then pointed around at all the places she was sure the cameras were watching from. "Heck, when those guys first got here, I couldn't even get one measly park built, and I still can't!"

Ben would have pointed out how much she had built already, including the scene of this very meltdown. But too many compliments were apparently what started this mess, so he would stay quiet until Leslie exhausted herself- no matter if it was a longer wait than usual.

"I couldn't get through big speeches, I was obsessed over the wrong guy, and I'm sure I embarrassed myself as often as you did on Perd Hapley, without even knowing about it! I didn't care that much about it before, since I was so focused on my goals, but now I'm actually meeting them. So what if it's just a setup for a big downfall, like everything else from before?"

Ben had seen a lot of Leslie's different brands of freaking out before, and came to….appreciate them all. But this was something different; something a bit more serious. Something that almost resembled his own ways of hating his embarrassing past- except Leslie was a lot more clear and verbal about it.

"If anyone else saw everything from the last two years, they probably wouldn't like me at first. They'd wonder how someone like me could even be in government, much less out of the looney bin. Who knows, maybe they'd see all the better things I put together after those first weeks, and wonder how the heck I could get that successful out of nowhere. I mean, I went years without doing that, so how it is plausible that I could do this much and be this lucky now? And how much longer until it gets too implausible to go on, and it's back at unlucky, unfunny to be around square one? I can't go back to that after all this! Not when there's so much I still want to do first!" With that, she seemed to really force herself to stop ranting- something which Ben would force himself to ignore.

As far as self-loathing speeches went, Ben had to objectively place it below the top 10 of his own. But since this came from Leslie, of all people, it likely made it a big challenger for No. 1 on principle. And since it was so….unnecessary, that put it over the top.

"Well, maybe it won't end up that way. Maybe it can still do all that other stuff. Maybe enough people were won over when it got better that they'd stick through everything else, even if there was a decline. Because they've seen enough of it at its best that they know it can get that big again. But they don't really care that much if it doesn't, as long as they get to see it all."

"Well, maybe they're biased because they didn't see the early days, or how poorly reviewed they were."

"Maybe they didn't, but they know- I mean, I know enough to know the whole story." Ben was getting a bit tired of using metaphors now, since he was starting to lose track of the larger point. Besides, even if he had to hide behind metaphors for other matters with Leslie, he figured he needed to speak some kind of full truth at least once.

"You do? How?" Leslie gasped, which was at least a more normal action for her than the ones from the last few minutes. "Did you get an advance cut screening from the camera people?" She then pointed again to the hidden camera locations, and had some words to go with it. "Guys, was there an advance screening I didn't get an invite for?"

"No, no, I didn't need them," Ben reassured, although he had briefly thought about it. Yet on the off chance they filmed some….all too secret developments between him and Leslie in the future, he would need more discretion from them than ever. So bribing them for old Leslie footage wouldn't help win them over. "I got enough from gossip, TV clips, and Ann to put it all together," Ben explained, figuring he shouldn't reveal every detail on how he researched her in these last months. She probably thought he was halfway nuts already sometimes.

"Leslie, maybe those first few times with the cameras weren't the….smoothest. But they weren't a total loss. I mean, you met Ann on day one, didn't you? That time can't be all bad if you met your best friend in the whole world, who's even better than 10 old Lindsay's. She must have made all those old rotten moments much better than they would have been otherwise….like when you got drunk and she helped you tell off some jerk trying to fire all your friends."

"Well, there was that. I mean, if beautiful friends do that much for you."

"And what about Ron? From what I heard, he was even more uncaring and bitter about his job and you back then. Then you helped him beat Tammy the first time and proved yourself on that hunting trip, and then he helped you on Christmas and Valentine's. If you hadn't gotten through to him that much before last year, he surely wouldn't have stopped some lunatic from firing you. And now he's having his best birthday ever because of you, and it's gonna be that much harder for him to ignore that he does care about you."

"Well, it kinda sounds like he doesn't ignore it, or make it that obvious that he wants to, but point taken," Leslie stated in something resembling her normal voice.

"And okay, maybe Andy and April are still goofy and grouchy. But April told you she loved you at the wedding, and that couldn't have sprung up in the last few months. I mean, she found her husband on the job, and she had that job because of you…and maybe Ron at the end. And you gave Andy the job he needed to move on from Ann and find April, well before you revived the Harvest Festival."

"Well…Andy might have taken longer to say he awesomesauced April without the Harvest Festival, but I'll give you point No. 3 anyway," Leslie teased. "Wait, what about Tom? He, um…..he lost his fake marriage, and he still can't get his products to take off….ooh, wait, he owns part of the Snakehole now! Wait, I was too busy fighting with Ron over awards at the time, so I didn't help there…"

"It's okay, I think you've got enough evidence by now," Ben reassured. "You were well on your way long before last year, and so was everyone else, whether it was because of you or not. You guys were already rapidly improving and finding great success of your own…..maybe you needed some outside help to help you peak, but the potential was there from the beginning. Even in those early days, and even in so-called unlucky, unfunny people."

Leslie was even more relieved than usual that the weird but fun Ben thoughts were coming back again.

"This didn't come out of nowhere, so let's just say it was always supposed to happen, but it just took a while to get going. Now that it has, it won't stop now, or anytime soon. Not if all the fans that have been won over along the way have anything to say about it. But you're gonna be bigger and better for such a long time, we won't need to do anything, except feel lucky to see it."

Ben wished for a bit that he didn't slip back into metaphors, as it was starting to be an all too comfortable habit. But if he hadn't, he might have let some other non-metaphors slip, and then things would be a bit more awkward than he intended. Yet when he finally saw Leslie start to light up again- light up even in the nighttime- he once again wished that he could be more awkward.

Yet this wasn't quite the night for that, although he had hopes that it might be when he first put this together. This turned out to be something a bit better, to honor the rapid, but not one bit surprising, rise of Leslie Knope. Someday, it might include other milestones, but that was for another time- one that not only Ben was imagining right now.

"You know, you keep saying great stuff like that, it might get way too perfect again. But then I'd go on about it being too much, then you'd prop me back up, then it'd get too perfect again, and the brutal cycle of awesomeness would just go on and on!" And thus, the peppy Leslie that had been the one constant through it all- whether enough people appreciated it right away or not- was back in force.

"I guess I'll have to work in some non-sappy moments to break the spell," said the ever-more powerful peppy Ben.

"I guess you'll have to get on that then," Leslie stated, and punctuated it with two brief pats on Ben's cheek. Of course, this made Ben suddenly have to put his hands on the stands so he could keep sitting upright- and of course, they also slipped and made him fall on his back. So he stayed there for about a few seconds, as Leslie looked on in fear.

"Were you looking for something like that, then?" Ben somehow managed to quip, in spite of his nearly revealing pratfall. But it seemed that Leslie wasn't dwelling on the immediate or long past anymore, and just giggled like usual.

"You still might need to do a little better, but you got time!" And Leslie thought she hit the nail on the head- not like the nail that Ben's head missed. No matter how rapid, unlikely, or slowly her other achievements, and secret hopes, came to pass, she had plenty of luck left to help her get them all eventually.

Maybe she'd even tie up that somewhat neglected loose end of Lot 48 in the meantime.


End file.
